


Her heart is fit for home

by aizia



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Female Eivor (Assassin's Creed), Mutual Pining, Please note, Takes place in the timeline where they don't officially get together until Gunnar's wedding, There is a panic attack depicted here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-14 12:14:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28670565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aizia/pseuds/aizia
Summary: “You’ve been away for so long,” Randvi said. When she looked at Eivor, fly-aways spilling out of her braid and smelling of the sea, bleary eyed and still in thrall’s clothes, she was filled with an overwhelming sense of relief. (There was something else, too; she burned sweetly with it, and perhaps she would finally allow herself to call it as it was, soon.) “You look like shit.”(While Eivor is away in Vinland, Randvi manages what the drengr has left behind and comes to an acceptance of who her home has always been with.)
Relationships: Eivor/Randvi (Assassin's Creed)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 212





	Her heart is fit for home

**Author's Note:**

> _Her breast is fit for pearls,_   
>  _But I was not a "Diver" –_   
>  _Her brow is fit for thrones_   
>  _But I have not a crest._   
>  _Her heart is fit for home –_   
>  _I — a Sparrow — build there_   
>  _Sweet of twigs and twine_   
>  _My perennial nest._
> 
> —Emily Dickinson

Several parts of the loom were loose, and many of its intact pieces were as charcoaled as firewood. It was damaged beyond repair; Randvi did not need to be a weaver to come to such a conclusion.

Wallace had only had the misfortune of being overheard by Sigurd while he was in especially poor mood. He had doggedly ordered the loom, set on fire by a candle knocked over by one of the children, to be repaired instead of replaced. 

Randvi reached out to touch the loom, thumbed at the soot on her finger. The decision had been nothing but another frenzied power play, as if clutching desperately onto the last vestiges of his leadership could stop it slipping from his grasp.

Wallace was occupying himself preparing the deer in front of him, politely ignoring her inspections. Sigurd’s confrontation had affected the man, even if he would not say it openly. 

He met Randvi’s eyes when she came over to him and placed some coins on the table. “Be discreet when you replace it,” she said.

He raised his brows in surprise. 

“Anyone can see that it has been burnt to a crisp, of no fault of your own.”

“Thank you.” His gaze flickered between Randvi and the coins. “This is... very kind of you.”

“It is not much, for all you do for the clan,” Randvi said. She nodded curtly. “I will be around, if you need me.”

She left Petra and Wallace’s workshop, grateful she could still see Sigurd sitting by the docks, facing the water. Randvi wrung her hands on the short trip back to the alliance chamber; he would be so in his thoughts he would likely soon forget about this, anyway.

She allowed herself to lean on the table for a moment. In the three months Eivor had been gone in Vinland, gaining alliances in England had been put on pause, and Randvi had not been spending nearly as much time on diplomacy. 

But that did not mean she lacked things to do in Ravensthorpe, in Eivor’s absence. At times, she could practically hear Eivor telling her she was spreading herself too thin and that she should rest, but a part of her wished she had even more to do, if only to busy her hands and still her thoughts.

If Eivor had only been in England, the knot of worry Randvi always held in her absence would have been much more usual, more manageable. She knew that the drengr could handle herself in any battle or brawl she came across in all of the kingdoms, and would only truly risk death in combat when it was needed for the good of her people. She had never been needlessly reckless with her life.

But Eivor could not axe her way through sickness or shipwreck or dehydration or starvation or--

Randvi exhaled forcefully, picking up one of her to-do lists on the table.

  * _Speak with Winfrith and Berthram_



On the last day of the yule festival, Berthram had drunk much more mead than he could handle and broken one of Tekla’s barrels. Randvi would have a discussion with Berthram the following day and replace Tekla’s barrel, but Sigurd’s ordered punishment of a month of unpaid work was unreasonable for such a transgression. The youth was barely 15 winters, and Winfrith needed his hand at the cattle farm.

  * _Speak to Olsen and Holger about conflict_



Randvi knew little about this, other than Olsen had told her to speak to him in his workshop about something Holger had done. The rest of the settlement was learning to hide issues from Sigurd as much as possible, it seemed.

  * _See if Brigid needs anything else to finish settling in_



Brigid and Gunnar had come back with Eivor from Glowecestre not long before she had left for Vinland.

  * _Hear out complaint from Eydis_


  * _Requests for items: speak to Yanli_


  * _See to odd smell just outside longhouse_


  * _Make some toys for the children (so they’ll stay out of mischief for a few days)_


  * _Repair table in longhouse_


  * _Respond to letters_


  * _Salt for the horses_


  * _More fishing nets for Merton_



By the end of the list, the words were failing to spark meaning. In her hand, the paper shook, and she let it drop onto the table.

She clenched her fist and tipped her head forward, blinking against the weariness that clung to her. Some food would do her good.

Tarben had left some bread in the longhouse not long before; Randvi sat on one of the empty tables and cut herself a piece. Thankfully, she did not think of much at all as she stared at the longhouse wall and chewed. 

“Randvi!” Gudrun called from the doorway. “Can I get your help with something outside?”

Randvi almost choked trying to swallow her bread. “I’ll be there in a moment.”

She needed something to drink.  
  


* * *

_  
They were back in Norway._

_They stood in a shallow dip between two mountains, the snow so bright around them it was almost blinding. Eivor lay down in the dense blanket of white, and Randvi sat down beside her._

_“I wish the snow could gather under my skin,” said Eivor, her voice an echo, as if underwater, “surround my bones, and cloak me in silence, just the way it quiets the land.”_

_A polar bear appeared before them, growling and hissing with blood on its maw. Eivor unsheathed her axe and tackled the beast. They wrestled around in the snow, and Randvi hit the bear with her hammer many times, but none of her blows seemed to inflict any damage._

_But no matter--Eivor emerged victorious, covered in bear’s blood but smiling. The body of the beast simply vanished; Randvi did not have long to think about where it went before the ground turned into the ocean and they were swimming, no land in sight._

_The waves pulled Eivor away, away, away; every time Randvi pushed herself forward, Eivor was swept back._

_Randvi tried to speak, tried to scream,_ take off your armour so you don’t sink, _but the water_ _flowed into her mouth, choked her as it gushed down her throat._

_Eivor had not yet sunk, but her eyes already looked terribly lifeless, like a drowned man bobbing up to the surface._

_And then Randvi couldn’t breathe, either._

She woke up gasping for air, soaked in sweat. She fled the bedchamber, fled Sigurd, white splotches gathering behind her eyes and obstructing her vision. She found herself sitting on Eivor’s bed without conscious thought, clenching the blankets in her fists. She tried desperately to concentrate on pulling air into her lungs and pushing it all out before she inhaled again, on the rhythm of breathing, until the hard edges of dread slowly faded.

It had been some time since she had had one of these spells of blind terror, as if chased by a wolf that did not exist. They had been at their worst during her earlier years with the Raven Clan, from arrival up until the end of the first year of her and Sigurd’s marriage. Something deep-rooted and instinctive in her always led her to Eivor when they had happened: she had nearly always found herself in Eivor’s arms with her vision clearing and her breathing slowing before she even remembered getting there. Eivor knew, now, how to recognize them, knew to hold her tightly, tether her to this earth. She had always done so without question, though Randvi was sure she did not understand them any better than herself.

Randvi lit one of the candles by Eivor’s bedside from a flame in the main hall of the longhouse, not ready to leave quite yet. In the wake of her terror she had been left with a hollow ache.

Everything in the dim space spelled Eivor’s presence: the scribbled notes on the desk, the books and trinkets from her travels, the blankets she always smoothed before leaving the room.

The tear slipped from her cheek and landed on the hand clenched in her lap before she could stop it. She rubbed at her eyes with the heels of her palms and pretended it was only to soothe the throbbing in her temples. “Come back to me, Eivor,” she whispered, a plea in the dark. “Gods bring her back to me.”

Something in her finally cracked.

She was powerless to stop the silent shaking that wracked her body. When it became too difficult to suppress every audible sob that threatened to escape her, she took one of Eivor’s pillows and stuffed it in her face to mute the sound. 

The realization of her mistake was instant; her scent, wind-blown and of smoke, oils and honey from soap, overwhelmed her, and it was so achingly well-known to her that a fresh wave of tears spilled onto her cheeks.

It felt only an insult, in that moment, a stick taken and twisted into a deep, festering gash, that she could not cry freely. That she was to smooth over her turmoil with neutral looks and placating words whilst her chest tore itself to pieces.

There would be no other way.

When the tears eventually let up, she was left with only exhaustion. She pulled Eivor’s blankets on top of her and let herself drift off, if only for a moment...

* * *

“Randvi?”

Randvi pried open her eyes. In that second, she was struck with several realizations: that she was in Eivor’s bed in Eivor’s bedchamber, that morning sun already shone through the windows, that Gunnar’s voice was calling for her from somewhere in the longhouse.

In panic, she ripped the blankets from herself and leapt off the bed. 

She held onto the doorway of Eivor’s chamber, turned the corner tentatively to see Gunnar facing the alliance chamber, back to her. She took a breath to attempt to calm herself; there would not be a way out of this. 

“I am here,” Randvi said. “Sigurd was…” She did not know why she was explaining herself; her shoulders sagged in defeat. “I just needed a moment to myself.”

Gunnar looked at her for a moment, and then clapped a comforting hand on her back. “I will come back later, Randvi.” The concern in his gaze made Randvi wonder if he knew more than she wished for him to. “Take your rest.”

She couldn’t bring herself to go back into Eivor’s bedchamber again in her absence, as if touching the bed would burn her.

* * *

  
It had been Eydis who had noticed the speck of a longship in the distance and had blown her horn to alert the village of Eivor’s hopeful return.

Randvi tried to busy herself in the hours that the ship sailed closer to the docks, tried not to stare endlessly at the horizon. When she could finally make out Eivor’s outline in the boat, the tight, 4-month-old knot in her chest finally loosened, and she let out a sigh so deep her chest veered forward with the weight of it.

She could see Eivor waving now, though she was still too far away to make out her expression or to know where exactly she was looking.

Randvi did not greet Eivor at the docks, if only because she wanted her first conversation with Eivor after all this time to be private. She desperately wanted to let her guard down again.

Eivor would know where to find her.

* * *

She did not need to wait long.

“Eivor!” she heard Knud yell from just outside the longhouse. “We thought you would be gone forever!”

Randvi walked out of the alliance chamber and stopped near the longhouse entrance where the children spoke with Eivor.

“Did you have any adventures?” Eira asked. “Did you meet any wolves?”

“It is good to see you, little ones.” The sound of Eivor’s voice after so long blanketed Randvi in such a warmth it took all her effort to command her face into neutrality. “I will tell you later. Right now, I need to speak with Randvi.”

Eira pouted. “You are always speaking with Randvi.”

Eivor noticed Randvi then, watching silently from the doorway. She smiled at Randvi from her crouch on the ground, looked at her steadily as she stood up and said, “She gives me good advice.”

“It’s almost sundown,” Randvi said, eyeing Knud and Eira. “Your parents will be looking for you both.”

They protested little before they ran off side-by-side, arguing amongst themselves about whether Vinland could possibly have wolves. Randvi watched them until they returned to their respective homes not far from the longhouse. It was the moment they disappeared into their houses that Eivor turned to Randvi; no doubt she had been watching for the same thing.

“It is good to see you as well, Randvi.”

“You’ve been away for so long,” Randvi said. When she looked at Eivor, fly-aways spilling out of her braid and smelling of the sea, bleary eyed and still in thrall’s clothes, she was filled with another overwhelming sense of relief. (There was something else, too; she burned sweetly with it, and perhaps she would finally allow herself to call it as it was, soon.) “You look like shit.”

There was that grin that had always disarmed her in a second. “Were you worried?”

“Of course I was. It’s such a long voyage. Did you do what had to be done?”

“I have. Gorm is dead. The Kjotvesson clan is wiped from this world.”

Randvi nodded firmly. “Good.”

“And how are you?” Eivor asked, softer now. “What have I missed in the clan?”

Randvi thought of her chamber, where she knew Sigurd was stewing on the bed. “Come,” she said, and led Eivor to a far corner of the longhouse, away from the possibility of him overhearing.

Eivor looked at her expectantly once Randvi had led them to a stop. Randvi took another step towards Eivor, telling herself the closeness was needed to keep her voice low. She took a deep breath. 

“It has been difficult, you being away. Sigurd has not improved. I have tried to reason with him. I have done my best to clean up after what he has done in his storms of power-lust. To go against him privately will not help what people say of our marriage, but I will not stand by and let him inflict this much damage, after all the work we have done. Many of the villagers come to me now, in private, when there is something that they need, something they need overseen. Ravensthorpe is growing too large for me to provide for their needs on my own. I have been in over my head.”

The furrow in Eivor’s brow deepened.

“I worry there will be unrest. A man so absent most of the villagers knew him as only a name carried away by the wind, returning just to threaten the livelihoods of the very people who provide services for him. They will not tolerate it for long.” She could not stop her voice from breaking when she added, quietly, “All the while, I did not know if you would return, Eivor.”

“I am sorry, Randvi.” Eivor’s eyes were regretful, weary. “When I left, I thought I was doing a service to the clan, to leave for a time. I see now I was not.”

She felt no animosity towards Eivor; she could only hope that this was what would make her finally accept how instrumental she was to the leadership of the clan. “What you did was needed,” she said, “even if it was not at the right time.”

“Tell me all I can do,” Eivor said, “to ease your burden.” 

“Start by staying here, for some time,” Randvi said. “And if the winds ever call your heart back to Vinland, I hope it will not be soon.”

Eivor frowned, shaking her head. “I travelled to Vinland out of duty.” Her gaze softened. “The winds call my heart back to you, to Ravensthorpe. My home.” An intensity burned through the gentleness in Eivor’s gaze and it caught Randvi off guard, made the air halt in her lungs. She held Randvi’s upper arm, the touch so welcome and so very Eivor that Randvi felt like she’d been winded. “I will gladly stay, as long as you need me to. You have my oath.” 

She was in Eivor’s arms before she registered the steps she had taken. Eivor’s arms tightened around her body, instinctual and right. 

“You do not need to pledge an oath,” Randvi said. Eivor’s hands slid off Randvi’s arms as she pulled away.

“My vow has been spoken.”

Randvi was afraid to say more, as if the warm blaze in her chest would be exhaled in flames were she to open her mouth. “There is one more thing I would like to ask of you.”

Eivor took a step back. She had a ghost of the same look on her face that she had before leaving for an alliance: steady determination. “What do you need?”

“It is more a matter of what _you_ need,” she said, finding Eivor’s shoulder and allowing herself one more moment of touch for that night. “You look like you are barely keeping yourself upright, mighty drengr. Sleep.”

Eivor half-smiled, and she tilted her head with a deference that was not entirely mocking. “I will do as you say, Randvi.” 

Randvi watched as Eivor walked to her bedchamber; Dwolfg perked up from her spot on the rug and walked in circles around Eivor, who grinned and rubbed her down. “I have missed you too, wolf.”

That was when Randvi knew her mistake. 

Eivor moved to sit on her bed, pausing before smoothing her hand over the side that Randvi had left unmade weeks before, the crumpled, cast aside blanket a tell-tale sign of past occupation.

Eivor looked at Randvi curiously, and she knew Randvi too well: could recognize the brief but familiar flash in her eyes before she concealed panic into neutrality. This was answer enough for Eivor, and she gestured for Randvi to come into the bedchamber. When Randvi was near enough, Eivor jerked her head towards the alliance chamber, a question in her eyes, and Randvi understood. _Are you sleeping in my bed to avoid him?_

“You have not been the target of his anger, have you?” she whispered.

“No more than you’ve been. I am still mostly the target of his silence.” Randvi shook her head, laughed humourlessly. “Perhaps an insult, if he’s in the mood.”

Eivor’s sigh heaved her whole body forward. “I’m sorry,” she said, and Randvi couldn’t tell if she was apologizing again for her absence or on Sigurd’s behalf. “I wish I did not need to ask. At times, I feel I barely know him anymore.”

Eivor stared ahead of her in thought, and Randvi watched her for a moment before sitting on the bed beside her. “I have only myself to blame for your unmade bed,” Randvi said, a certain security in the dimness of the room; the sun had begun to set, but Eivor had not yet lit any candles. “I have missed your presence.”

Eivor blinked silently, as if catching up to the implications of this statement.

“It was only for a night. It was not my best one.”

Perhaps it was Eivor’s weariness making her too tired to conceal it, but in all the times Eivor had looked at Randvi with affection, she had never received a look of such a deep and unabashed tenderness, so complete and open.

Eivor took Randvi’s hand and brought it to her heart for a moment before she let it go. 

It occurred to Randvi in that moment, with Eivor looking at her with such earnest devotion she could not look away, that her oath did not only concern place of residence; it was a vow: _You are home to me. Where you are, is where my heart is._

She took Eivor’s hand and brought it up to her heart and back to return the promise.

Gaze unbroken, Eivor’s thumb was stroking her cheek before she realized she had shed a tear. Eivor intertwined the fingers of her other hand with Randvi’s on the blanket, and her thumb shifted to graze over Randvi’s lips, achingly gentle, as if to say _If I could kiss you right now, I would, but I can’t._

Randvi’s eyes fluttered closed and for a moment, she let herself fall into the relief of it; Eivor was here, safe and whole, Eivor wanted to stay close to home now, Eivor had taken her hand and said, _I am yours_ , in the only way she possibly could in the moment.

Before long, there was shuffling at one end of the longhouse, and they shared a moment of silent understanding before Randvi nodded, stood up from the bed, and ignored how much she’d like to fold into Eivor’s arms. With a brief touch to Eivor’s shoulder, she let the moment shatter.

Eivor’s eyes were still on Randvi when she turned back to look at her on her way to her own bedchamber.

Randvi slept soundly for the first time in months.  
  


* * *

_(1 year later)_

Dusk was rapidly approaching, and though Randvi had had the foresight to take a vesseled candle with her to the docks, she had made little progress on the work she had laid out on the table before her.

She hadn’t had particularly high expectations for her own efficiency that evening; it was something to occupy herself more than anything, to hold her over in her impatience. 

It would not be much longer, now.

Gunnar passed her on the way back to his workshop, holding a large crate in his arms. “Waiting for the chieftain?” he asked.

That was nothing new to Randvi, surely. She smiled. “Yes, but don’t tell her. She has only been gone a couple of weeks. It will go to our jarlskona’s head.”

Gunnar laughed loudly. “She won’t hear it from me,” he said, walking towards Eivor, who was now docking at the harbour. Randvi waited at the table as Eivor greeted Gunnar, unhurried, knowing Eivor had seen her.

Eivor’s eyes focussed on her as soon as Gunnar had walked back into his shop, gaze intense even from ten or twelve paces away. Ah yes, there it was.

Wordlessly, Randvi closed the space between them and pulled Eivor into a kiss there on the docks, tender but with a fervour that belied her previous restraint.

When Randvi pulled away to look at Eivor, a pleased half-smile tugged at her lips. She leaned her forehead against Randvi’s. “It seems you missed me.”

“I always do," Randvi said.

Eivor held her close. “I thought of you every day and every night,” she said. She held onto Randvi’s arms gently even as she pulled away, quiet for a moment, as if to take her in. “You haven’t told me yet that I look like shit. I’m missing it.”

Randvi gave her a once-over. Eivor had clearly tried to freshen up before returning; her hair was neatly combed, and she smelled mostly of honey soap. “If you look like shit now,” Randvi said, “it is very appealing shit.”

“Appealing shit,” Eivor repeated. “If I didn’t know better, I would think you were trying to get me to bed.”

Randvi laughed. She stroked Eivor’s cheek and thumbed lightly at the deep bags under her eyes, visible even in the lowlight. “I might be. You look like you need a thousand nights of rest, my love.”

She took Eivor’s hand and held it as they walked to the longhouse, held it in between undressing each other, held it until Eivor fell onto the bed and sighed in relief.

“Come to me,” Eivor said.

For the first time since Eivor had left, Randvi came home.

**Author's Note:**

> Emily Dickinson likely wrote that love poem for her “dear friend”(!) and her brother's wife(!), Sue.


End file.
